Bite the Bullet

The beginning of the twentieth century. A newspaper organises an endurance race: seven hundred miles, on horseback, in a few days. The prize is large and entry is open. Different people come. Sam Clayton is a former cavalryman who treats his horse well. Luke is his old friend and wants the money. There is a woman who needs it to get her husband out of prison. An English gentleman, an old cowboy and a young man are riding too. The route crosses desert, mountain and water. As the race goes on the horses give out and the people begin helping one another. Richard Brooks writes and directs. Gene Hackman, Candice Bergen, James Coburn, Ben Johnson and Jan-Michael Vincent are in the cast. It was shot in wide format in real locations; the production worked at length in Nevada and Colorado. The matter it treats is the treatment of animals; the film criticises the race as a spectacle and shows what it costs the horses. The title comes from a scene; what is done to a competitor with a toothache is its hardest passage. The narrative delays naming a winner and pushes the race itself into the background in the last section. The old cowboy played by Ben Johnson makes a speech, and that section is what is most cited. The film did not take the expected result at the box office. Its limit is length; the narrative is long and the middle stretch comes apart. Who it is for: viewers who like westerns of the seventies and productions shot on location. Who it is not for: it is long, the pace uneven, and there are many characters.